A New Society, a new education!

Our schools, sadly, are structured by the extreme income inequality and lack of mobility that has increasingly characterized U.S. society since the late 1970s, a disparity more unequal in the U.S.than in other developed nations.  Over the last fifty years, the country’s top 1% of earners have gained 275% greater income, while the middle spectrum of earners have gained less than 40% and the bottom five percent have stayed virtually stagnant.

Tragically, instead of formal education now being the way to upward mobility that it once was, it now, if anything, perpetuates inequality.  In 1945, a child had two more years of education than his or her parents.  Now that figure is six months.  Test scores, grades, drop-out rates, admission to college, and college success rates all correlate with income.  Right now our educational reward system is an ecosystem where failure for those already deprived of resources is the almost inevitable outcome.  Where a system of inequality is systematically rewarded, there is no true democracy.